I think you are the only person trying to infer that anyone claimed favicons were the key thing.

The original tweet that started the whole discussion is: "There's something strange about the recent design change to google search results, favicons and extra header text: they all look like ads, which is perhaps the point?"

The comment you replied to said: "everyone is hating on Google's new search results, in part because of a distracting favicon" (emphasis mine).

There is no real inconsistency there, but for some reason you seem to have decided that there is and that it is very important.